Patients Make Poor Health-Care Consumers, Says Quest Diagnostics’ CMO

Nope, says Jon Cohen, a vascular surgeon and chief medical officer at Quest Diagnostics. The average American spends twice as much time before buying a TV as they do looking for a doctor, he told participants today at TEDMED in Washington.

“Consumer-driven healthcare doesn’t work because people don’t want health care,” he said.

The three main factors that drive consumers to make a choice: price, quality and desire, said Cohen. When it comes to health care, however, price doesn’t correspond with quality, so going to a more expensive doctor doesn’t guarantee better treatment.

It’s also difficult to judge quality when it comes to health care, he said.

He gives the example of his own father getting a recommendation about a doctor not from his physician son, but from a nice guy in the lobby of the hospital.

“The guy sold doughnuts,” said Cohen.

People like to use service to judge quality, such as whether the doctor’s office calls back quickly, holds evening hours or has parking, rather than the more important measures like judgment and experience, he says. Patients have to do a lot more digging to get the more vital information and don’t know how to get the information or whom to ask.

Finally, desire is critical to being a critical consumer.

“It’s amazing what people will do when they really want something,” said Cohen, and in many cases, people don’t have such motivation when it comes to quality health care. For example, people with high-deductible plans or health savings plans tend not to spend money to get basic care, he says.

So what could help patients become savvier consumers? Getting people to want the same high quality of care for themselves as they wish for their children, said Cohen. “Intense desire trumps all barriers,” he said.

Comments (5 of 41)

Well, if Quest knew how to treat patients, maybe they could be in a position to judge. There service is terrible and the arrogance of Dr. Cohen is a good example of how little Quest knows about its patients. For a good laugh, read Quests "Pledge" to its patients. Nice words on paper, but not reality

1:22 am July 25, 2012

Woonjin wrote :

You've been blogged! This pturcie has been used according to the Creative Commons license on the Health Care Reform Now! blog, a companion to the new book by George C. Halvorson: If you wish any changes to the attribution please let us know. Thanks!Patron Saint

11:44 pm April 22, 2012

John Fembup wrote :

"the average American is, honestly, not smart enough to make valid comparisons."

This is pure PNHP dogma.

Sadly, PNHP demonstrates yet again that it does not provide the health policy leadership our country needs.

2:44 am April 20, 2012

Re: Rich wrote :

Rich,

Making outcome data transparent won't tell you whether Hospital A is better than Hospital B or not. First of all, we don't even know what the correct/best indicators of quality of care are. Second of all, there are an incredible number of variables that need to be considered when you look at such data. Is Hospital A doing coronary artery bypass (CABG) on patients who are much more complicated (ie. more co-morbidities/higher-risk) compared to Hospital B? If that's the case, Hospital B would look better on paper if you just compared outcomes like mortality rate. Does that mean that Hospital B is better than Hospital A to get your CABG done at? Maybe. Maybe not. The answer is simply "we don't know." There are too many variables that need to be controlled for when assessing this. And the average American is, honestly, not smart enough to make valid comparisons.

10:20 pm April 19, 2012

John Fermbup wrote :

Rich, I generally agree with all you say - except for your first 6 words.